The Needle with Both Hands

By Terese Svoboda

Always fatal, Tay-Sachs disease affects
only Eastern European children.
                                          For R.N.B.

Over the waves of his chest,
you watch the sun go up, again. How
accidentally the birds cross it!
How seemingly accidental.
 
What random choices led you
to him—your darling
from the same steppes
as Zhivago's, and your own.
 
Then he's dressed, and you're almost.
Leaning over, he pulls your slip up
to put his hand over that fat part of you,
where swims the swimmer. Enter

                                                       Tay and Sachs,

two men good at identifying
            a certain kind of certain death
                        due to a certain mix of genes
                                    of children with certain parents.
 
Today you go to determine your chances,
rather, its chances,
all euphemism unable to cover
the chance red spot on the growing retina.
 
After your doctor has his way,
you can see on the screen
the little swimmer trying to escape,
holding the needle with both hands,
                                                                     just reflex.

                                      The verdict
takes time to swell and ripen.
The doctor offers his only balm, a curse:
knowledge without antidote. All you know
 
is that the immortals throw no bones,
that you inherit nothing
but genes and bravery, both faltering.
You trot back
 
to work and your new belly
swirls with the fetal pig you took the eyes from,
grade ten. To market, to market.
You pull your goddamn shrinking coat
 
around you. Nothing like
the stir of life that has no chance.
You shrug. It’s only the size of your finger,
you don’t care—
 
                                    But knowing at the end
of ten hours’ pitched screaming,
your insides reversing, you get
                                                           nothing—
           
            What goes where with death?
You know all about life.
You majored in biology, pirouetted
through the wedding night.
 
Does it make sounds yet?
Choose happiness but accept the truth:
the child might die, you tell your husband.
                                                      Suffer and die.
 
In the three-week wait you type
and each hammer moves the days along.
Waiting, every word from everyone hurts,
every Good day,
 
                        careless or concerned,
every word. The only sympathy you want
is the same cruelty shared, all else
grates. Inside, it spins—in fear?
 
What you must swallow
is the sugar cube of your continuing,
the inescapable desire to pee
that stirs you mornings, hours before dawn.
 
But if,
              at the end of these weeks of waiting,
the white-masked priests come back bearing
no news, which is their best,
 
you will have brushed off death,
rimed him bright and acceptable                    
                                          and seen it slant.
Either way.

                          That is, what happens
doesn’t matter. You eat.
You lie down. The sun shrinks.
              The daily din you’re thankful for
 
rescinds its paper currency that nothing backs up.
               Your husband puts on a pot to boil, and another. He can’t
feel it inside, though he’s eaten the same sour apple,
bearing half the genes,
 
those underclothes, the bra, the brief
of the body. You are dumb
before his helplessness. The cord to belly to cord
will not be broken,
 
ripped untimely as it may be.
Mama has happened
                              and the rocking horse of your heart
heaves on.

Copyright Credit: Terese Svoboda, "The Needle with Both Hands" from When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley. Copyright © 2015 by Terese Svoboda.  Reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.
Source: When the Next Big War Blows Down the Valley (Anhinga Press, 2015)